Frequent acquisition errors with Coolscan 5000

[chris_a3]

<p>Hi all, just bought a Nikon Coolscan 5000 ED, and started on the mammoth task of scanning some 4000+ 35mm negs going back 25 years or more.<br>

I'm using Nikon Scan 4.02 (as stand alone app, on a PC, XP pro SP3, Quad 6600 at 3.3 GHz, 3 Gb RAM, plenty of hard disk space), mostly default settings, 8 bits and ICE on fine.<br>

Frequently getting this in the log file:<br>

Image 1 Started 25/09/2009 12:09.<br /> ERROR: Acquisition Failure.<br /> The image was not saved.<br>

This happens whether I use single scan or batch, although it seems to be less frequent if I scan a crop of a single frame.<br>

I've tried VueScan, which seems more reliable in this respect, but I'm not finding its dust/scratch removal as effective as ICE with the Nikon software.<br>

I'd be grateful for any ideas.</p>

[chris_a3]

<p>A little supplementary info... this is what it logs along the way:</p>

<p>Thumbnail scan started 25/09/2009 13:54.<br /> Acquire completed.<br /> Acquire completed.<br /> Acquire completed.<br /> Acquire completed.<br /> Thumbnail scan completed.<br /> Item 1 Preview started 25/09/2009 13:55.<br /> Acquire completed.<br /> Preview completed.<br /> Item 2 Preview started 25/09/2009 13:55.<br /> Acquire completed.<br /> Preview completed.<br /> Item 3 Preview started 25/09/2009 13:56.<br /> Acquire completed.<br /> Preview completed.<br /> Item 4 Preview started 25/09/2009 13:57.<br /> Acquire completed.<br /> Batch scan started 25/09/2009 13:58.<br /> Preview completed.<br /> Item 1 Scan started 25/09/2009 13:58.<br /> Auto focus completed.<br /> Auto exposure completed.<br /> Scan failed.<br /> Batch scan was canceled by the user.</p>

<p> </p>

[mendel_leisk]

<p>Are these color negatives? Just curious.</p>

<p>I'd agree with you regarding Vuescan's cleaning, vs ICE. I'm scanning a color negative collection with a Coolscan V. Well, except I seem to have taken a sabbatical, really should get back into it.</p>

<p>My take also is that Vuescan's cleaning is not as good as ICE, but my color negatives are in decent shape (not requiring too much cleaning), and the convenience and features of Vuescan convinced me to stick with it, at least for that film format. Actually, I started out running the scanner with Vuescan (which I've used for years, with various scanners), and it was several months before I even <em><strong>tried </strong></em>NikonScan.</p>

<p>If you do give Vuescan more of a try, I'd suggest the Pro license, which unlocks the ability to save Vuescan Raw Files, a good strategy: allows you to scan once, save all the data as it came from the scanner, and subsequently experiment with different adjustments, without compromising the Raw data.</p>

<p>Also, for color negatives, look into "Advanced Workflow". There's also on the net some discussion (and merit) to "Super Advanced Workflow".</p>

[chris_a3]

<p>Colour negatives, yes.<br>

What worries me is how Nikon Scan fails to acquire so often (at least a couple of times from each strip of 4 negs). There's nothing obviously wrong with the strips, and the negs are reasonably well exposed.</p>

[chris_h]

<p>Try turning off ICE dust removal and see if it completes. My scanner does the same thing (vista x64) and I did attribute it to an nonsupported OS - perhaps it's something else. When my scanner prints out the failed to acquire message I can hit scan again and it completes.<br>

All is fine with Vuescan.</p>

 

[chris_a3]

<p>Hmm, it does seem to be better with ICE off - I scanned a strip and it ran through without stopping.</p>

<p>However, ICE is the very thing I need. VueScans IR cleaning would do, I suppose, for most of the negs, but I haven't been able to get scans with natural looking colours with it, whereas the AF/AE with Nikon Scan gives very pleasing results.</p>

<p>Any clues on how to adjust the Vuescan settings appropriately? Not asking for a tutorial, but a pointer to the relevant information would be appreciated.</p>

[rob_wall]

<p>Les may be on to something, because ICE really puts the hurt on your processor. On my setup ICE makes the process take three times as long (one hour for a roll of film with ICE on vice maybe 20 minutes with it off). Is it possible that your CPU is not up to the task?</p>

[mendel_leisk]

<blockquote>

<p>Any clues on how to adjust the Vuescan settings appropriately? Not asking for a tutorial, but a pointer to the relevant information would be appreciated.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>You would need the Vuescan "Pro" license for the following workflow, to unlock the raw file functions. FWIW, it's really the only license that "makes sense". The non-Pro license only allows upgrades for one year (vs forever, or until Ed Hamrick packs it in), and locks out raws and doesn't allow ICC profile generation (mixed blessing, that function doesn't work very well).</p>

<p>Anyway, there's a terse description of the "Advanced Workflow" here:</p>

<p><a href="http://www.hamrick.com/vuescan/html/vuesc15.htm#topic12">http://www.hamrick.com/vuescan/html/vuesc15.htm#topic12</a></p>

<p>And some (equally terse) discussion of color negative scanning here:</p>

<p><a href="http://www.hamrick.com/vuescan/html/vuesc20.htm#topic17">http://www.hamrick.com/vuescan/html/vuesc20.htm#topic17</a></p>

<p>These are all in the help file when you download the program as well, it's also html.</p>

<p>The root of the online version is here:</p>

<p><a href="http://www.hamrick.com/vuescan/html/vuesc.htm">http://www.hamrick.com/vuescan/html/vuesc.htm</a></p>

<p>And most of the info can be found by going through the various "Apendex A and B" catagories. "Apendex B" is an exhaustive summary of every function, very handy. "Apendix A" goes into "Advanced" functions. There's nothing really advance about them though, they really are a good idea for anyone scanning.</p>

<p>So just to summarize, I would intitially output only a Vuescan Raw File. As the name describes, it's the raw data from the scanner, suitable for post process within Vuescan.</p>

<p>To get the optimum raw it's good to follow the Advanced Workflow. You basically preview a strip of leader, the clear zone before the actual picture frames. If you don't have the leader the space between frames will do in a pinch. Vuescan analizes this area and optomizes the scan accordingly. Even without Advanced Workflow it will do a rough shift of the red/green/blue channels to neutralize the orange mask, but AW further refines this shift, and the exposure.</p>

<p>FWIW, there info on the net regarding Super Advanced Workflow. I've tried both, and the raw files output with the latter do look a step up (a bit more neutral, with histograms still not clipping but pushing the two extremes a bit more). But I'm not sure that the end results were that much different.</p>

<p>So anyway, first you acquire your raw file, per above. Then scan-from-disk with Vuescan, utilizing the above file as source material, with the aim to produce an inverted (the raw file is still a negative image), nicely color balanced and more strongly contrasted finished file.</p>

<p>The settings for this are largely in the Color Tab, some (fundamental) ones in the Input Tab, and some output ones in the (you guessed it) Output Tab. Here some notes on what I'm using:</p>

<p>Scan Log: Old Color Negatives: With Coolscan V<br />Settings at time of actual scan:<br />Input|Media: Color negative<br />Input|Batch scan: List<br />Input Batch list: 1-4<br />Input|Auto focus: Scan<br />Input|Auto save: Scan<br />Crop|Crop size: Auto<br />Crop|Buffer: 15% (at scan, 0% at scan-from-disk, u/n)<br />Filter|Infrared clean: Light<br />Filter|Grain Reduction: Light<set to None doing scan-from-disk<br />Filter|Sharpen: None<ticked when doing scan-from-disk<br />Color|Color Balance: White Balance<br />Color|Black point: 0%<br />Color|White point: .5%<br />Color|Curve low: .25<br />Color|Curve high: .75<br />Color|Brightness: 1<br />Color|Negative vendor: Generic<br />Color|Negative brand: Color<br />Color|Negative type: Negative<br />Color|Scanner color space: Built-in<br />Color|Output color space: sRGB<br />Output|Raw file: ticked<br />Output|Raw file type: 48 bit RGB<br />Output|Raw output with: Save (applies cleaning and rotation)<br />Output|Raw compression: Off</p>

[chris_a3]

<p>Well I'm very grateful for all these suggestions - and I will definitely give VueScan more of a go, since everyone speaks so highly of it.</p>

<p>But following Les's comment, I thought I'd give a different computer a go, to see if it was something to do with the one I'd been using, which is a Quad 6600, 3.3 GHz, 3 Gb RAM, lots of HDD.</p>

<p>I fired up an old Athlon machine (XP 2500+, 2 Gb RAM), installed Nikon Scan on it, and have now scanned about 50 frames, with ICE on, <strong>and not a single error</strong> .</p>

<p>Why on earth might there be such a difference? I've never had an inkling that there might be anything wrong with the newer machine, or any of its USB ports, and I use it for a lot of heavy stuff.</p>

<p>Obviously I'm delighted that I now have a realistic workflow (and my thanks to Les for his link, which I'd already found and was using), but it's very strange that a much more powerful computer has the problems, whereas the older, less powerful one doesn't.</p>

 

[mendel_leisk]

<p>Did you use the same cables for both installs? Could also be a flakey USB port.</p>

[chris_a3]

<p>@Mendel:<br /> Yes, same cables for both. On the PC that it doesn't work on, there are 6 USB ports - four at the back and two on top. Tried them all. I have lots of other devices usually in those ports - all work perfectly.</p>

<p>@Les:<br /> Thanks. I've done 450 frames now in total, about 150 since changing computers. Just feeding a strip in every 10 minutes or so while doing other things. 7 mins +/- a few seconds to do a strip of four.</p>

<p>I've found a few nice ones in amongst the dross - I'll put up a few perhaps. <br /> Mostly though, it's 20+ year-old memories that have been flooding back. Quite an experience, actually.<br /> Thanks again.</p>

[don_gallagher]

<p>Could you have some obscure conflict with another USB device? Our Coolscan was freezing using Vuescan (we had problems with NikonScan too) but when we disconnected one of our USB backup drives everything worked fine. It was one in particular; we had other devices that produced no conflicts.</p>

[chris_a3]

<p>In case anyone's interested, I think I've got to the bottom of why scan acquisitions were failing with my Nikon Coolscan 5000 ED...</p>

<p>... an unstable overclock!</p>

<p>The computer came from <a href="http://OverClockers.co.uk">OverClockers.co.uk</a>; it has a Quad 6600, factory overclocked from 2.4 to 3.3 GHz. It was always completely stable, or so I thought. Recently, it was blue screening randomly, but only with a grid computing client running, which thrashes the processor and memory.</p>

<p>To cut a long story short, I used <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime95">Prime95</a> to torture-test the PC, and it threw up errors. On reducing the OC from 3.3 to 3.0 GHz, the errors disappeared, and the computer was again stable with the grid computing client (<a href="http://boinc.berkeley.edu/">boinc</a>).</p>

<p>I then got the scanner working with Windows 7 x64, as described in <a href="00Ryck">this</a> extremely helpful thread, and tried it out...</p>

<p>Works perfectly ! I'm really pleased, as you can imagine.</p>

<p>Hope this is of some interest and/or help to someone.</p>

[chris_a3]

<p>PS.. re-reading this thread, I'm wondering if Les was referring to the OC in his earlier comment</p>

<p><em>"perhaps it's your specific computer setup as obviously it was not intended to function as you have it."</em></p>

<p>If so, I guess he was right. I've had the computer for about three years now, and until very recently, when I moved from XP to Win 7, it's worked flawlessly (apart from the scanning!), so I never suspected that there was anything the matter with it at all.</p>

[anton_alexandrov]

<p>Hi All!<br>

Just got the Nikon 5000 scanner and installed the 4.0.3 software to my Vaio laptop (Core i7-based) and win7 x64.<br>

Had the very same problem: about 50% of scans with enabled ICE failed for no reason (it just scans 2 times, then says "can't transfer image" or something like that), and then re-scan succeeds.<br>

I would like to share a strange solution to the issue. I downloaded Prime95 stress-test and run it in background. It loaded all 4 cores to 100% and almost all memory is used. But with this test running, Nikon scan is working pretty well, no errors at all. All system is slow though :)<br>

So my guess is that there is some software error that uses some data block before it was allocated (got from scanner or so). Slowing down the system helps this program code work as predicted.</p>

[chris_a3]

<p>Interesting. Just to add another twist to the story, for reasons unrelated to the scanner, I've downgraded to Windows 7 x86.<br>

The scanner works fine, and it continued to work fine even after I restored the original overclock.<br>

So, on this computer ...<br>

XP: Doesn't work at all<br>

Win7 x64: Works ok without the overclock<br>

Win7 x86: Works ok with the original overclock (and the original driver off the CD, too).</p>

<p> </p>

[dominik_lazarski]

<p>Did you ever figure out what else could be an issue? I've had the same PC for a long time, Win7 64 bit, VueScan driver and it used to scan fine. Insert strip of 6 and no issues. After not using it for a while I started shooting film again and now I can't scan a strip. It errors out first time it scans a frame but it works on retry so I have to go one by one. If I disable ICE, then it scans the strip just fine without any errors. Any ideas?</p>

[ryanm]

I found that if I put my CPU in a low-power state - "Maximum battery life" for my laptop - it works fine. So I would try to force your CPU to run at a lower frequency and see if that helps. I have a i7 that runs around 3.5GHz and at that speed it fails every other time I scan a picture. Running around 1.2GHz now with ICE enabled and it never fails. Currently scanning 4x pictures in a row from strips.

[bgelfand]

'm using Nikon Scan 4.02 (as stand alone app, on a PC, XP pro SP3, Quad 6600 at 3.3 GHz, 3 Gb RAM, plenty of hard disk space

 

 

I think the problem may be that you are running Windows XP on an Intel 6600, a Skylake CPU and chipset. As far as I know, XP never supported that hardware. Your USB ports are on the PCH chip on the motherboard which is not supported. I am surprised this is the first time you have had problems with this combination.

 

I run Nikon Scan 4.03 Vista under Windows 10 on my Ryzen 7 3800X mother board using the VueScan driver and have no problems. It is a matter of having the proper operating system and drivers for the chips.

 

Oops, one of these days I have to remember to check the date of the post before I answer.